How to Determine the Permissions for a ClickOnce app. (There are some limitations to the Permission Calculator tool. The tool performs a static analysis of the code and cannot determine permissions required for late-bound code or for dynamically loaded assemblies. In addition, if you have designed your application to dynamically modify its permission demands when running in an environment with lesser permissions, the tool will report the maximum required permissions.)

Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) The scene: Man holding a fish seated next to a mermaid on a TV show set. Man says "We knew a mixed marriage might be difficult, but we never expected this." 2) Wife to husband in front of TV with large CBS-style eye filling the screen: "I hope this is CBS." 3) The scene: Man, driving a clunker belching smoke. Signage on car door: "As heard on Car Talk." 4) Man gazing upon piece of furniture in his living room: "And this thing was a treasured family heirloom till I saw it appraised on 'Antiques Roadshow.'" 5) Caption on cartoon showing man (presumably Tony) gazing at his comb, wallet, etc. on grass behind him - along with back pocket, hanging by a thread: "Tony is a purchaser of cheap pants." 6) The scene: Man seated on stool playing guitar and singing to a man at the Complaints window.

Questions and Ponderables of the Week

Not too long ago, I finished Tim Egan's remarkable book about the dustbowl (Worst Hard Time), so it was particularly interesting to read the HBR editor Ted Halstead's recent editorial promoting a new Homestead Act for what he sees as the atrophying 21st century middle class. Do you worry about the plight of poor Americans? Katherine Boo's excellent 2/6/06 New Yorker article, "Swamp Nurse," (not online, but Q&A here) tackles the same topic.

In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor's Robert Marquand, embattled Chinese journalist Li Datong says that his Freezing Point site is meant to show people that "fear is not a normal state of existence." I invite you to ponder your own personal fear level, and trends in fear levels in different communities. From the February 24, 2006 edition. Related: Washington Post article on Li Datong with excellent links.

We've all heard the terms "sound science" and "flawed science" used recently, especially in a political context. Do the terms mean anything to you? Can you think of better terms?

It's my observation that kids who are good at algebra have a hard time with geometry and vice versa. Was this the case with you? With your kids?

A question on a local newspaper's kid's page intrigued me: "What chess piece are you?"

Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) Scenario: man and woman seated on couch, observing elderly man dancing on their dining room table with his cane held aloft. The man says, "Your grandfather just paid off his student loan." 2) Series of placards above Army recruiting station: "An Army of Juan," "Some Juan," "Any Juan." 3) Man at entrance to something that looks like a junkyard for cars: "I need two pickles for a '96 cheeseburger." 4) One Secret Service agent to another, observing former Presidents Bush and Clinton seated next to each other at a drive-in that's showing Brokeback Mountain, "I'm begining to think their friendship's real." 5) Forest Fire Level-type sign in front of a church: "God's Wrath Level: HIGH", 6) The scene: a little kid is standing in front of a snowman. The kid, who holds a bag of baby carrots says to the snowman, which has a normal carrot nose, "For 20,000 bucks, I can replace that with a cute little baby carrot." The caption: Future Plastic Surgeon. 7) Banner over a local high school on Presidents day: "Send Presidents Day Greetings Over Wiretap"

Recommended book: Clifford Conner's "People's History of Science." It's written in the spirit of Howard Zinn's "People's History of America" and has tons of footnotes that will entice you to further reading and thinking. Good review with excerpts.

Question of the Issue

Jefferson once said, "I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple. Were we directed from Washington when to sow when to reap, we should soon want bread." He was raising the old question about centralized government, of course. How do you think we're doing in our era?

Info about Alonzo Church (1903-1995). Church is credited with having invented lambda calculus and is associated with the Church's Theorem, showing the undecidability of first order logic.

Audio replay of the 12/9/05 Science Friday radio show featuring Alan Lightman talking about his new book "The Discoveries," his selection of the most significant discoveries (including original papers) in 20th century science.

Water Cooler Games - "video games with an agenda." Categories include politics, advertising, education, healthcare, society, and design. A recent BW article "Video Games are the Best Revenge" led me to the site.

Greenfield mode. Type of 802.11n backward compatibility that addresses a pure network of 802.11n APs and clients, taking full advantage of the high-throughput capabilities of the 11n MIMO architecture.

Questions of the Week

Gandhi once observed that, "As the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence." Do you agree?

In an excellent essay on the curious topic of "players," in the February issue of Harper's, Garret Keizer begins by taking issue with a statement by a recent National Teacher of the Year that teaching students to write essays was irrelevant. (What they need to know was how to write good memos.) Do you agree?

Valentine's Day question: Do you remember the 1993 movie, Indecent Proposal, where a billionaire offered a young couple a million dollars if the wife would sleep with him? What's your bottom line? Would you ever betray your spouse/significant other for a huge sum of money? What if you had to sleep with someone to save your significant other's life. Would you?

Cartoons I've enjoyed recently: 1) The scene: man and woman at a restaurant. The man says, "Sorry if I've been kind of quiet, but I misplaced my talking points." 2) The scene: Panhandler holding sign that says "Zero hits on Google." 3) Sign in coffee shop: "Warning: Too much food can make you fat." Cook to customer: "It was my lawyer's idea." 4) Sign advertising sidewalk vendor with computer: Vet Your Date. 5) Brokeback-inspired: a) Man in old-fashioned long johns approaching bed where another man is working on his laptop. Computer guy to the first man, "And what if I don't want to be Jack *or* Ennis?" b) The scene: Two elderly cowboys sitting on their shack's porch. One asks, "Were we gay?" 6) The scene: Two farmers on porch looking at groomed poodle: "That dawg won't hunt." 7) Attorney to his son: "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to sue, and he'll eat for a lifetime."

Heads Up

Misc

Two-part article by Peter Haumer on the IBM Rational Method Composer, a (commercial) process and content management framework that builds on the open source Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) and basically replaces the well-known Rational Unified Process (RUP). Part 1 and Part 2.
Notable: Peter's discusssion in Part 2 on "Managing intellectual capital and assets as method content and guidance: Related: an article by Ricardo Balduino of the Basic Unified Process (BUP) for small and agile projects.

29 January 2006

Readable/Watchable

Neat post by Keith Brown on VS 2005 extensibility. "was building a data access layer today and got really sick of typing data-holder classes that are really only around to make the GUI guy's life easier when he goes to use databinding (which requires properties). Kind of like this..."

Questions to Ponder

Marshall McLuhan once observed (rather depressingly, it seems to me) that the successor to politics will be propaganda - "Propaganda not in the sense of a message or ideology, but as the impact of the whole technology of the times." Do you agree? McLuhan also said that "Those who distinguish between education and entertainment don't know the first thing about either." Well, what do you think?

Food for thought: "There is nothing accidental [then] in the fact that democracy in politics is the twin-brother of scientific thinking..." Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), in Drift and Mastery (1914)

In the February 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine, Scott Swigart discusses the his "Paste As Visual Basic" add-in for Visual Studio 2005 that converts C# to VB. As Scott explains, it's really an interface to existing Web-based code converters (Kamal Patel's C# to Visual Basic code converter Web service at ConvertCSharp2VB, and Carlos Aguilar Mares's AJAX-powered code converter at CodeTranslator), but Scott's integrating solution provides and elegant form-based interface and also shows you how to create add-ins. Very cool.

Fritz Onion has written an interesting Extreme ASP.NET column in the January issue of MSDN Magazine about subtle changes in the codebehind model in ASP.NET 2.0. Here's an excerpt: "There are two differences between this model and the previous 1.x model-the introduction of the CodeFile attribute in the @ Page directive and the declaration of the codebehind class as a partial class."

(SQL) Bob Beauchemin has posted a page proof version of the 56-page sample Chapter 4 (In-Process Data Access) from his and Dan Sullivan's forthcoming book, SQL Server 2005 Developer's Guide. Unfortunately, you'll have to download (20 MB) and install the new Adobe 7.0 Reader in order to read it.

Browsable

Heads Up

Questions to Ponder

I went on a tour of the Reagan Library recently, and various displays featuring all the US presidents reminded me how I'd had to learn their names in order. That led me to think of other things I'd had to memorize as a kid. Think back on your own school days: what can *you* remember memorizing - and how good is your memory?

When was the last time you held a shell to your ear?

Today's young kids don't seem to have the same opportunities to get neighborhood jobs as they used to - paper routes, weeding, mowing lawns, babysitting, and so on. (They also don't seem to be getting as much homework). Does this worry you?

Did you ever consider joining the Peace Corps? Why or why not? If it had been an option to a mandatory year of military service, would you have opted for it in favor of military service or work in US inner cities?

15 January 2006

Readable/Watchable

Richard Newcombe and John Mueller have each written recent articles on using voice with VB. You can read Richard's (VB and Voice Recognition, which focuses on Microsoft's Speech SDK) and John's (Building Speech-Enabled Apps with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8).

Info about various Platform SDK tools such as Where and Rebase here and here.

Downloadable

Monad Beta3. x86 code. Docs. As Arul Kumaravel says in his post, Monad Beta3 is feature complete and "contains support for our new snapin model which allows cmdlets to be developed and distributed easily." The scripting shell is expected to ship initially with Exchange 12.

Jargon Alert

GINA - Graphical Identification and Authentication, a component that serves as the gateway for interactive logons. It's the pluggable part of WinLogon that third parties may replace in order to customize the functionality or the UI of the logon experience in Windows. Keith Brown's two part article on customizing GINA here and here.

ERA - No, not the Equal Rights Amendment, but the US National Archives' Electronic Record Archives, which will be created by Lockheed Martin under a six-year $308M contract awarded last September. Press release and info here and here.

GMO - genetically modified organisms, which may include plants. Here and here.

Questions to Ponder

What single item that you've lost, given away, thrown out, or otherwise don't have, do you wish you could have again?

Imagine that time travel is possible for you as an observer (let's keep things simple by assuming you can't change events). Would you travel forward or backward in time?

Do you ever envy the job security enjoyed by previous generations of Americans who often counted on "lifetime employment" with a single company? Or would you have found it boring?

Do you consider yourself more materialistic or less materialistic than your parents? More or less racist (or otherwise bigoted)? More or less religious/spiritual?

How do you reply to the Biblical question, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

Misc

Who knew? According to GlobalSecurity.org, four nations have more than a million active duty troops. Can you list them in order? They're China (2.25M), USA, (1.625M), India (1.325M), and N. Korea (1.075M).

Cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito's site will be of interest to anyone who's interested in how children interact with digital media. I found Mizuko's 2004 paper on childhood imaginations particularly thought-provoking.